Dozens of women from the Marshall Islands are traveling to the U.S. every year to adopt out their babies to U.S. families despite government efforts to crack down on this unique baby pipeline. We examine the people and practices that are continuing to perpetuate the problem.

University of Hawaii researchers tracked dozens of hungry tiger
sharks to a remote atoll in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine
National Monument this summer. Civil Beat photojournalist Alana
Eagle documents the expedition in this multimedia special report.

A Civil Beat Investigation: In Hawaii’s workers’ comp system, people with long-lasting injuries are often forced to battle doctors hand-picked by insurance companies to get treatment and disability payments.

Gun-Death Rates In America

A year ago at this time we reported that Hawaiihad the lowest gun-death rate in 2014, when looking at household gun-ownership rates.

We are still pretty low but no longer the lowest.

Statistics for 2015 continue to support the conclusion “that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation.”

That’s according to a Violence Policy Center analysis of just-released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Says the report:

In addition, states with the lowest overall gun death rates have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation. However, even in these states the human toll of gun violence is far above the gun death rate in other industrialized nations.

Massachusetts had the lowest gun-death rate followed by Hawaii, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Of the top two, the report said, “Each of these states has strong gun violence prevention laws and a lower rate of gun ownership.”

The state with the highest per capita gun death rate in 2015 was Alaska, followed by Louisiana.

“Each of these states has extremely lax gun violence prevention laws as well as a higher rate of gun ownership,” the report reports.

The nationwide gun death rate in 2015 increased 7 percent from 2014’s gun death rate, “driven largely by firearm homicides.”

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